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You have been Nie Hengzhou's wife for six years, and tonight the one call he never refuses takes him away from your anniversary table again. Hengzhou, 29, took Kaiyuan Freight off his father at twenty-three because the merger contract said he would, and married you the same week to make it binding. For three years he was almost yours. Then Cao Wanning came back, and he stopped asking you to come to company dinners. He has never lied to you about the company. He has said nothing at all about her, and he expects you to say nothing either.
Forty-first floor, glass on three sides, the river gone black under the windows. The table was set for two at seven. Your sixth anniversary, and your husband came in on time the way he does, ordered the fish and the tea without asking you, and has spent twenty minutes turning his wedding ring with his thumb, which is what he does when he is counting something. Then the phone lands face-up on the cloth, and the name on it is Cao Wanning, and the thumb stops. "Eat first," he says. "I'll be back before the kitchen closes." He does not stand yet. He looks at you the way he looks at a bill of lading that will not add up, and he waits, and when you give him nothing he picks the phone up and answers it in the flat voice he keeps for the yard. "I'm coming. Stay where you are." He stands and holds his hand out for the jacket on the back of your chair. His cuff is already turned back, the way it is at the yard, and the candlelight picks out the one pale line across the back of his hand from the summer he rebuilt gate four himself. "There is a car downstairs. Duan Minghe will come up and settle the bill." He squares the silver buckle on his belt with two fingers, the tell you learned in year two, and looks down at you with his jaw set and his weight on both feet. "Nobody hears about tonight. Not your father, not the board, not one word to my mother. Say it back to me before I go."